The Complete Troy Bodean Tropical Thriller Collection

by David F. Berens

  “You don’t want to be alone?” Troy said, and then quickly added, “for safety’s sake. Is that it?”

  He had rescued her from the depths.

  “Yes.” She nodded vigorously as she said it. “That is precisely it. I was hoping you’d stay and keep me safe.”

  Safe from being alone and bored, she thought.

  The man mimicked her by looking at the non-existent watch on his darkly tanned arm.

  “I reckon I could stay a while,” he said. “I suppose I can put off my rendezvous with a Greyhound until next week.”

  She smiled at him, and an awkward silence threatened to creep up between them. Before it could, he reached out and took her feather duster from her hand, tossed it on the couch and pulled her into the kitchen. He opened the stainless steel industrial-sized refrigerator to reveal two Coronas, a partially cut orange, a cardboard pizza box—and nothing else.

  “I drink my beer with an orange slice,” he said pulling the beers out. “How about you?”

  “When in Rome,” Prosperity heard herself say as he opened the bottles and shoved two slices into each one.

  “I had no idea the Romans had Coronas,” he laughed as he handed her one. “But I do know they had beaches all over the world. You in for a quick walk?”

  She raised her beer and took a sip. It was dry and bitter but followed quickly by the sweet and tart tang of the orange. It was damn good.

  “I’m in.”

  At least until midnight, she thought. That’s when things get cranking at the Tail Spinner.

  Prosperity made it home at dawn and found Troy still asleep. She picked a random bathroom, stripped off her smoky clothes, and showered to get the garish makeup off her face. She didn’t want him seeing her like that. She reserved that look for perverts and wannabe gangsters at the club.

  As she scrubbed herself with a guest’s forgotten loofa, she daydreamed about Troy walking in and catching her with a squirrely towel that would insist on revealing a bit too much. But he didn’t, and she thought that was probably for the best.

  Troy had woken up by the time Prosperity exited the bathroom. She hadn’t slept all night, but the shower had rejuvenated her. She was more hungry than sleepy now, so she told Troy what she was craving, handed him a wad of ones to pay for it all—along with the keys to her bug—and sent him into town. To kill time, she’d started cleaning some of the rooms they weren’t occupying.

  More of the rooms than not looked like they hadn’t been touched since her last cleaning—certainly not the story when the last maid suddenly quit the job. Prosperity had gotten the job by eavesdropping as one of the customers at the Tail Spinner complained about having to get rid of the last cleaning woman and needing someone in a hurry. When she heard the last maid was making fifteen bucks an hour, her ears perked up. They were desperate, as guests were coming the next day and the place was turned over by a bunch of hippie protesters having some kind of clean-up-the-beach party. They had apparently been hiking the beaches of Martha’s Vineyard for a month and had stacked the trash and refuse on the back deck of the rental. One of the men sitting with them commented how those hippy types didn’t shower either and the how the sheets probably reeked of patchouli.

  Though Prosperity wasn’t exactly looking for extra work, she always seemed to need money and she had a phone bill that was three months overdue. She leaned in and said she’d be happy to help, but they’d have to pay well since she’d be missing out on a night of good tips. A bit of haggling and pats on her behind later and she was hired. The next day she found that the place did, indeed, smell like patchouli ... and pot. And the mounds of trash took her four hours to haul away, three at a time, in the tiny trunk of her car.

  Thankfully, today most of the house looked unused. The bathroom and bedroom the man had been using were mostly clean and one other room seemed barely lived in. In the others, she found the beds made and the trash cans empty. She ran her duster over furniture idly as she made her way down the long hallways.

  She took a flight of stairs down toward what the owners called the back of the house. It was a darker area of storage for linens, cleaning supplies, extra dishes, and sundry items that always seemed to end up stowing away in the guests’ luggage.

  She grabbed a few sheets and things to make up the two used bedrooms, and when she leaned over to add pillowcases a strange smell wafted up from below the plastic shelf unit. Her first instinct was mold. This room was probably flooded in a storm at some point, and maybe the water had pooled under the shelf and grown mold.

  She pulled out the shelf, expecting to find grungy green water, but instead found something black and sticky. When the puddle hit the air, the smell intensified and knocked Prosperity back a step. She clutched her hand over her mouth and nearly dropped the clean linens in the muck.

  “Jesus Christ,” she said through her fingers. “What the hell is that?”

  Her eyes watered and she nearly bolted out of the room. But then she realized the ooze was coming out from under a section of the wall behind a shelf that didn’t quite reach the ground. When she examined it closer, she figured out that it was not a wall at all. It was a door.

  She put the stack of linens on the shelf, taking a pillowcase and wrapping it around her face. She pulled the shelf unit away from the concealed door. She had never seen this before and had no idea what to expect, but something made her trace her fingers along the surface until she found the edge. It didn’t have a handle, and though she could get her fingernails into the crack around the door, it wouldn’t budge.

  She leaned down and eased her fingers under the bottom of the door, trying not to get too much of the inky fluid on her hands. That low to the ground the smell was horrific. Definitely not mold, she thought. When her fingers were all the way under the door, she pulled. It moved a little but seemed to catch on something. She pulled harder, bracing her foot against the wall. A loud screech preceded the door flying open, sending her skidding backward to land on her bottom.

  Inside the secret room, a fluorescent bulb flickered on and Prosperity gasped. Only this time, she wasn’t gasping from the smell. She was shocked at what she saw inside the room.

  4

  Bank On Frank

  Troy Bodean dumped his overflowing grocery basket onto the checkout conveyor belt. An orange and a banana flopped out and wobbled as the belt slid along toward the cashier. The uninterested kid with red hair and dark freckles smacked his gum as he slid each item past the sensor.

  “Nice day out,” Troy said with a smile. “Good day for fishin’.”

  The cashier looked at Troy under heavy eyelids and stopped chewing his gum. He looked at the girl bagging the groceries and huffed in obvious indignation. With a single smack, he rolled his eyes and glared back at Troy.

  “I wouldn’t know. I for one do not participate in the rape of our planet of its animal inhabitants for food when a perfectly sustainable supply of plants exists for our sustenance.”

  Troy opened his mouth to argue with the kid, but he’d already looked back at the girl tucking the eggs and milk into plastic bags and loading them into the basket.

  “Oh, I get it,” Troy said, picking up a package of maple flavored bacon. “You figure if you don’t eat meat, you’ll get a date with Sally down there. That about right?”

  The boy’s eyes went wide with shock, and he stopped running the food past the red laser light buried deep in the counter. The girl arched an eyebrow and grinned. She folded her arms and watched with amusement to see how her suitor would reply.

  “Pigs have feelings too,” was the best line the kid could come up with.

  “What do you say, little lady?” Troy tossed the bacon down on the counter. “You ever seen a pig cryin’?”

  She smiled wider and said, “Mister, I’ve never seen a pig at all, in real life.”

  “Vineyard native, eh?”

  She nodded.

  “Well, if you’ll tell Skippy here that I promise not to fry my bacon in front
of him, you think he’ll hurry now and ring it up for me?”

  “My name is Wesley.” The red-headed vegan wannabe was shaking with either rage or embarrassment. “And I will not ring up that meat. I won’t touch it.”

  He shoved his hands under his armpits and stepped back from the register. The girl laughed and then quickly covered her mouth as a man with a horseshoe of hair and a dark green apron and holding a wooden clipboard walked up.

  “Is there some problem here, Wesley?”

  “No ... well, yes. I mean ...” he stammered. “This man is berating me for my spiritual beliefs about meat.”

  Troy could see the man’s name tag. It proclaimed him the manager of the store.

  “Wesley, we’ve been through this before,” he said in exasperation. “You cannot talk about the customers’ groceries. You ring them up, and Chelsea bags them. End of discussion.”

  “I’m terribly sorry,” he said to Troy. “Here’s a coupon for ten percent off your next purchase.”

  Troy tipped his hat to the man as he laid the coupon on the counter and walked away.

  “You heard the man, Wesley.”

  “It’s still wrong.” The boy slid the bacon past the register and it beeped. “And you can’t change my mind.”

  “Don’t reckon I need to, son. I’m gonna eat that bacon whether you think the pig was cryin’ or not.” Troy slid Prosperity’s crumpled wad of bills over the counter at him. “And I’ve got bad news for you. I’m gonna have it with eggs and milk.”

  Chelsea snickered and slid the bacon into a bag. Wesley started counting the money, and a strange grin slowly spread over his lips. He held up the bills and made a grand show of pointing at the register’s digital screen.

  “I’ve got bad news for you, savage,” he said. “You’re short five dollars and forty-three cents.”

  Troy looked at the money, then at the screen. He reached into his back pocket and pulled his wallet out. Unfortunately, Wesley could see when he opened it that he only had one dollar. He pulled it out and laid it on the counter.

  “Only four dollars and forty-three cents to go.” The kid was in full-on condescension mode. “Guess you’ll have to put back your precious bacon.”

  For a fleeting moment, Troy considered punching the red-headed cashier’s nose off his face. But, he took a deep breath and glanced over at Chelsea. She raised both eyebrows and gave an almost imperceptible nod down. Troy followed her gaze and his eyes rested on the coupon the store manager had given him.

  He handed it to Wesley and took his bags from Chelsea. Her cheeks flushed and she smiled.

  “Why don’t we take that ten percent off and call it even, shall we, Wesley?”

  He didn’t wait for the kid to answer. He strolled out and tossed his groceries into the passenger’s seat of Prosperity’s Beetle. It wasn’t a terribly manly looking car, but Troy could care less. He reached into the center console where he had left his Costa sunglasses and found a crumpled wad of ones. He pulled them out and counted them. Five dollars exactly.

  Life was good and he could only think of one thing that would make it better. As he pulled out of the parking lot, he spied a giant circular sign painted like a donut with sprinkles declaring: The Vineyard’s Finest Donuts and Coffee. Another sign under that proclaimed they were hot and ready.

  “Now, there’s a perfect day in the makin’ if I do say so myself.”

  He steered the car toward the shop, ready to see what five dollars would buy of the Vineyard’s Finest Donuts and Coffee. He took the right turn into the parking lot a little too early and never noticed his fender catch a red, white, and blue sign that read: BANK ON FRANK FOR MASSACHUSETTS GOVERNOR.

  But Frank would notice. Frank always noticed.

  5

  Guns And Money

  Prosperity dry heaved a few times and for a moment thought she might vomit from the wretched stink now pouring out of the room. Her eyes stung from the odor and tears began to trickle from her eyes. The light coming on had scared her into thinking someone was inside, but peeking through the doorway, she could see the automatic sensor switch that had activated it. Best she could tell, there wasn’t anyone here.

  Tightening a pillowcase around her face, she was able to block the offending odor slightly and able to investigate further. As her eyes became accustomed to the flickering dim fluorescent light, she could see the room was more of a hallway. It went ten feet back and turned ninety degrees to the left. Along the top of the hallway, she could see windows that looked to be six or seven inches tall positioned at what must be just above ground level outside. She was in some kind of cellar.

  A shiver ran down her spine as she walked down the hall. The walls gradually got closer and closer together until her shoulders almost touched on both sides. This totally reminded her of the scene from that one movie where the girl walked step by step down into a coffin-sized room where she was buried alive. Thankfully, when she took the left turn, the walls seemed to stop closing in on her. But the windows stopped and the light behind her faded the farther she walked.

  This short hallway emptied abruptly into a room that was at least fifteen feet square. The walls on the right were lined with large wooden crates stacked up to the ceiling. She could see the edges of windows behind them, but they were blocked completely. No light could get in. She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and turned on the flashlight. When the writing stenciled on the sides of the crates came into view, she knew what was packed inside. Guns. Big, mean guns.

  Moving across to the opposite wall, she could see huge stacks of plastic-wrapped bricks. White powder bricks. She didn’t know enough about cocaine or heroin to tell which one these were, but somebody had a boatload of drugs down here.

  She estimated there were over five hundred of the bricks. Is a brick a kilo? I don’t even know what that’s worth, she thought. But it’s gotta be thousands. She ran her hand along the top of the stack and walked down the row. The end of the massive pile of bricks left another space open between the bricks and the wall. Tucked back into that opening was a floor-to-ceiling safe. On a whim, she reached out and pulled the handle. With a metallic sucking sound, it opened.

  If she had been shocked by the staggering amount of guns and drugs down here, she was truly floored by the wrapped stacks of hundred dollar bills inside the safe. Almost all were wrapped with yellow labels that proudly proclaimed that they held ten thousand dollars. With a quick mental count, she figured that there must be well over ten million dollars in all.

  A shelf near the middle had several stacks without wrappers. The bills were loose. Thousands of dollars stared back at her. Steve Miller popped into her mind urging her to take the money and run. She reached out and picked up one of the loose stacks of hundreds. It was more money than she had ever seen in her life. She imagined driving around in a red Ferrari with the top off, her red hair flying in the wind, loose bills fluttering behind her in a whoosh as she sped away from here.

  She looked a little closer at the bills and realized that the serial numbers were in order—sequential. Damn, she thought. If the owner of this money was keeping track of those numbers, he would know if some went missing. Would he miss it? Would he know it was me that had taken it? Not likely.

  She put the money back into the safe and gently closed the door. As she did, her phone slipped out of her hand and dropped to the floor. The sound of a crack preceded the extinguishing of the light, sending her into night-blind darkness.

  “Aw, crap,” she said, bending over to pick it up. “If this thing is cracked …”

  She flipped it over and saw that the screen was indeed shattered. Her shoulders slumped and she thought again about the money in the safe. She shook her head. She was a lot of things that weren’t so great, but she wasn’t a thief. Mama always said if you wanted something bad enough, you could work for it.

  She swiped the screen of the phone and could see through the spiderweb of glass that it still worked. She tapped the button and the flashli
ght turned on. For the third—or maybe fourth—time, she gasped. The pillowcase fell from her face and the deep breath she took in was filled with the smell of rot. Putrid, rancid, fetid, gag-inducing rot. And she had found the source.

  Lying on the floor, mostly covered by a blanket, was a body. And then the vomit came. She hurled up the last remaining contents of what she’d had for dinner last night. The odor of it mixed with the odor of the body made her wretch three more times, but there was nothing left in her stomach. She seriously questioned her funeral services degree choice and made a mental note to do some soul searching about it later. She took three fast steps to run out of the room, but when she got into the hall, her curiosity made her turn back. Mama’s voice tried to tell her something about the cat and curiosity.

  “Shut up, Mama,” she said to the empty room.

  She tiptoed back into the drug, gun, money, dead person room and shone her flashlight on the body. A woman’s legs in flesh-colored hose and white tennis shoes poked out from under the old wool blanket. She wondered if the woman had had an accident down here, but quickly dismissed that idea. You didn’t have a fatal accident and then lie down and cover yourself up with a blanket. No, this woman was killed ... but how?

  She crept down, keeping her light on the body, and took the edge of the blanket between her forefinger and thumb. She pulled it back to reveal the rest of the woman. If there had been anything in her stomach, it would have exited at this point. Prosperity gave herself a few seconds to compose herself and then looked more carefully at the dead woman.

  Her neck was at an odd angle and looked like it might be broken. Her skin was loose and blistering and had a greenish tint to it. Unfortunately, the woman’s mouth was open and several teeth had fallen out. Prosperity wasn’t sure how decomposition worked, but she knew enough to know this woman had been here a long time—weeks maybe.